Hatchery Fire nears full containment

WORLAND – Huge progress was made on the Hatchery Fire located about seven miles east of Ten Sleep upping the containment from 65 percent to 85-90 percent containment thanks to the courageous work of firefighters and a little help from Mother Nature.

“In talking with some of the crew on the fire Wednesday night, they received some moisture on the incident. That helps a bit, but there is still some work to be done,” Washakie County Fire Warden Chris Kocher said.

Wednesday evening and Thursday morning’s lightning storms with high winds confirmed that the fire lines are working. “Containment has gone from 60 percent to 85 percent. With those winds (Wednesday evening), it just kind of proved that the fire lines are holding and the perimeter has not changed. There wasn’t any flop-over, there wasn’t any rolling debris that caught anything else on fire, so the lines are holding and that was proven again with that wind event this morning (Thursday),” Bureau of Land Management Public Affairs Sarah Beckwith said.

The percentage of containment means that resources can be released. “The fire is about 90 percent contained, after today’s (Thursday) shift they are going to turn loose a lot of the resources. They are going to release, tentatively, one of the hand crews and a couple of the engines. They are going to keep two engines through the weekend,” U.S. Forest Service Public Affairs Suzie Douglas said.

Friday the closure area will be cut almost in half. “Friday we are going to shrink the area closure. We are going to open up the old Highway 16. They’ve had some burning flaming big logs come rolling off those cliffs and actually got down to the highway so we are going to keep part of the closure on the north end closed, the climbing area. So the south end will be opened up and the old highway will be opened up Friday. Then we will just see what the weekend brings, but they are not expecting anything surprising,” Douglas said.

Information about both the Hatchery Fire and the Arden Fire, outside of Greybull, will now be combined. “I think that starting tomorrow we will be doing combined updates on the Hatchery Fire and the Arden Fire. It may be nothing has really changed but we also want people to know that we have not forgotten them,” Douglas said.

No information about the change in status of South Brokenback Road, which was closed shortly after the fire started Friday, was received at press time.